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| | History of the Christian Church, Volume IV: Mediaeval Christianity. A.D. 590-1073. | Christian Classics Ethereal Library |
 | | Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, a most influential, proud and intolerant prelate, was ill-disposed towards Gottschalk, because he had been somewhat irregularly (though not invalidly) ordained to the priesthood by a rural bishop (chorepiscopus), Rigbold of Rheims, without the knowledge of his own bishop of Soissons, and gone on travels without permission of his abbot. |
 | | He also offered, in reliance on the grace of God, to undergo the fiery ordeal before the king, the bishops and monks, to step successively into four cauldrons of boiling water, oil, fat and pitch, and then to walk through a blazing pile; but nobody could be found to accept the challenge. |
 | | Hincmar refused to grant him in his last sickness the communion and Christian burial) except on condition of full recantation. |
| www.ccel.org /ccel/schaff/hcc4.i.xi.xvi.html (505 words) |
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